Chapter 17

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Maxine's injures had healed over the next few days with Emily's help. Emily had already told General McKenzy everything about her healing powers and that she was taught how to cultivate by Maxine. She had been put to work healing the wounded immediately after the essence beasts showed up. During those few days, Maxine discovered that all the essence cultivators that had participated in the fighting had become celebrities, especially herself. They had posted a video of her saving people and of her fighting the Terror Bear. Fortunately, Maxine couldn't be identified because of how her essence armor covered her face completely. At best, they had her hair and eye color. Emily had gotten famous due to her healing abilities rather than her combative ones and hadn't gone out much. Since every time she had left her house, she got swarmed by her fans.

Maxine's mother hadn't left her side since she saw the extent of Maxine's injuries and insisted that Maxine not fight again. Unfortunately for her mother, that wasn't going to happen. So far, she was the only one that could fight iron stage essence beasts and have even a chance at winning. Since her fight with the Terror Bear, she had been pondering on how to more effeciently kill any essence beast that she may encounter. She didn't want to end up heavily injured every time she had a fight with an iron stage essence beast. If she kept that up, eventually she would die.

The first thing that she did was suggest that the general get some tanks armed with railguns. She couldn't imagine even a Terror Bear's defenses withstanding a fifteen pound projectile moving at mach 4 or more. Although that would only work if they had a clean line of sight and could spot the beast from far enough away. Otherwise she would have to fight them.

Next, She asked for some books, while they still existed, on several topics regarding the original forms of iron stage essence beasts. She began with several books on various animal types beginning with original forms of the iron stage essence beasts she remembered: Terror Bear, Rock Lion and Lightning Falcon. It was too bad she couldn't remember any others. Even though, she was certain there were more.

After reading up for awhile, Maxine started to feel stupid about how she went about fighting the Terror Bear earlier. It had an obvious weakness. It shared it with so many other land-based animals that predators had been exploiting for countless years. The weakness was at the base of the spine near the skull. If she had shot the Terror bear in that spot when she had been above it, she would have paralyzed it and killed the beast off at her leisure. This information solved the problem with fighting most but not all land-based essence beasts. Unfortunately it was useless against the flying variety. The Lightning Falcon was one such creature. It is only about the size of a full grown man. However, it's size isn't the reason that it's a threat. It is their speed. It was also the reason why they were called Lightning Falcons, since they resemble a lightning bolt when they strike. The good news about those birds is that they rarely nested near humans for some reason and do not leave their territory once they establish it. Her only solution for the Lightning Falcons was to avoid them at least for the time being.

It took Maxine five full days to completely recover, and was now at home. However her time recovering had given her plenty of time to think when she wasn't reading. The next wave of essence beast hordes would be in autumn months and the other places attacked didn't fare nearly as well as they had. Many fearful politicians had tried to get General McKenzy be harsher in his control of essence cultivators and demanded that he either turn them into weapons or kill them. She had appreciated how he handled handled that. He threw them out of his office and called a press conference to discuss with the public about people like her. He had kept it simple and started off with a simple explaination of what they were. He made it clear that most of the essence cultivators were not aggressive and wanted to be left alone. He finished by stating that the essence cultivators that had assisted in the rescue of civilians would remain anomynous. A few random questions were asked and answered. There was one question that caught Maxine's attention the most: How were they going to prevent future essence beast hordes? The general offered a few options such as better military readiness and the use of high tech weaponry, but Maxine knew those wouldn't be effective for long. They needed a better long term solution.

However Maxine had an idea of her own on that topic. Her idea involved finding or teaching more essence cultivators in order to either thin the beasts out before the become a problem or fight a horde when it appears. She knew the best way to do that was to start teaching others how to properly cultivate like she had with Emily and Amanda. They had alot of essence cores to fast track their cultivation too, but it might not be difficult to get started. However if she used her celebrity status, it might work. Maxine smiled to herself as she called General Mckenzy. He might be able to help arrange it.

So no word on what they thought about her breaking out of the base, or reaction when they discovered the 'shadow covered / masked cultivator' was Max? Dissappointing. Its little details like that that make these kinds of stories the most enjoyable to read.

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